Sunday, November 25, 2012

Holiday Tides

The San Francisco Giants have won two of the three World Series with excellent pitching and nothing much more except luck. Career years from has-beens and never-weres really made the difference. Talk about mediocre teams winning it all. A few months from now, let alone years, no one will recall more than two or three players on both teams.

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Change "Anyone seen Andre Bynum?" to "Anyone heard of Andrew Bynum?" Right up there with the worst trades to say nothing of vetting by a Sixers team in history. The alleged brain trust of the Sixers are already spinning this one as a salary cap gain, but in the meantime they will get nothing for the trade and cap hit this year and look like fools.

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I have a confession to make: growing up, this nice little Jewish boy rooted hard for the Irish of Notre Dame. It's been several decades since I rooted for their football team, but, then, I haven't really rooted for any football team unless, of course, rooting against teams from the South counts.

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The Phillies have been quiet thus far this off-season but I fully expect them to make a huge mistake and sign either B.J. Upton or Michael Bourn to big deals. Neither is the answer to their problems in centerfield.

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Approximately two weeks from now the idiots who run the NHL will cancel another full season.

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Speaking of football, local teams had up and down seasons. Temple entered the Big East a year too late. Last season they were very competitive. This season they were very inexperienced. Meanwhile, Penn continues to play just well enough to lead the Ivy League. When facing outside teams, the Quakers don't seem to have sufficient horses, but when the games count in the standings, these guys inevitably stand up!

Villanova rebounded from a terrible season in 2011, very uncharacteristic, and managed at least one post-season game before bowing out.

Philadelphia isn't really a great college football town, but a quick look at, say, the last ten years shows fans here could do a whole lot worse.

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And last but not least, it appears the Miami Marlins latest fire sale will go through without baseball's inept commissioner, Bud Selig, doing a damn thing about it. The Marlins are no strangers to giving a collective finger to their fan base, all ten of them. The Marlins already extorted a new stadium on threat of leaving town. Then they cut their overhead dramatically, shedding any players who were making big money (thanks to ridiculous contracts approved by the same brain trust). The rest of MLB should vote to move the franchise out of the state and strip the current ownership of operating authority.